REVIEW: Outlaws [2019]

You’re not the sort of man that walks away from anything. I told myself not to mention “Sons of Anarchy” in my review for Outlaws before sitting down to watch. My reasoning came out of a desire to judge Stephen McCallum‘s film on its own merits without trying to compare to something as zeitgeist-y as Kurt Sutter‘s tragic downfall of a “good” man forced to do bad things in order to achieve salvation. What’s ironic, though, is that you don’t have to get too far into Matt Nable‘s script to…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: Goldstone [2016]

“This land ain’t no place for a young girl” Another missing girl has Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) on the move while the world continues to turn a blind eye. This time it isn’t an aboriginal, though, the aftermath of his work in Mystery Road culminating in a shootout with everyone dead but he a distant memory. The case that has him traveling to Goldstone concerns a young Chinese girl, her place in the desert a curiosity Jay cannot ignore. Haunted by demons that go much farther back than anything…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: Mystery Road [2013]

“How’d he know it was a wild one, Jay?” Originally conjured up by writer/director Ivan Sen in 2006, Mystery Road’s look at a “turncoat” cop working within a largely racist, white profession always had Australian television actor Aaron Pedersen in mind for the lead. Years passed, locales shifted, and the end result is finally hitting theaters as a sort of contemporary western set in the outback home of a returning detective years removed after a stint in the city. Not only an outcast with his peers—each quick to ensure his…

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